Re: More on environments and objects

[Adrian Sietsma <adrian_groups@...>]

Rici Lake wrote:
> I use bit operations for fairly long bit strings. Using bits in a number 
> in order to compress a small number of "flags" into a single operation 
> strikes me as an abuse both of flags and numbers, but that might be just 
> me being a purist.

my major "number as bitset of flags" use is returning status codes from a 
function in c. since lua funcs can return mutiple values, and/or an ad-hoc 
table, it's not a normal usage case.

i would personally use a mutable buffer for the string of digits - give it a 
string constructor, __tostring() retriever, and have it return 0 for any 
out-of-range bits. it can auto-expand on bit set if required.
(i'm biased - i have such a buffer class)

Adrian